Warning from In My Community Local Paper, 'Station bike theft anger':ANGRY bike rider Antony Day says more needs to be done to prevent bike thefts at train stations after his bicycle was recently stolen from a locked cage.“You don’t feel safe parking your bike at train stations and frankly it encourages bad transport habits such as driving to work because why would you park your bike there if it’s going to get stolen anyway?” he asked.Mr Day (48) locked his bike in the SmartRider cage at Warwick railway station on his way to work recently, but came back to find it had been stolen.He said another rider also had his bike stolen on the same day, but no one seemed to care.

rolandp wrote:Warning from In My Community Local Paper, 'Station bike theft anger':ANGRY bike rider Antony Day says more needs to be done to prevent bike thefts at train stations after his bicycle was recently stolen from a locked cage.“You don’t feel safe parking your bike at train stations and frankly it encourages bad transport habits such as driving to work because why would you park your bike there if it’s going to get stolen anyway?” he asked.Mr Day (48) locked his bike in the SmartRider cage at Warwick railway station on his way to work recently, but came back to find it had been stolen.He said another rider also had his bike stolen on the same day, but no one seemed to care.

More details in the link to the article.

Very disappointing response from Transperth. Antony has said that he used a quality lock as well.

The cage at Cockburn east was recently doubled in size with signs hung telling people to register their multiriders for access. I did so last week and just received the automated reply below. They really need to sort that software out, no point in having the bigger cage if no one can use it.

Thank you for your bike shelter access registration. Registrations received have exceeded our software capacity. Improvements are currently being made to the system. New registrations will be accepted on a next-in-line basis and as you have already registered, you don’t need to re-apply. We will contact you when your registration is successful and in the meantime we sincerely appreciate your patience while we resolve this issue.

I've just posted an article on BTA's website, where I recently took some images of the Greenwood and Whitfords train stations.

Additional images in the article, but it basically shows that capacity has significantly exceeded at Greenwood, and Whitfords is currently right but only 50% actually use the shelter. This is based on today, what happens in the future when cycling numbers increase?

I would like to hear from people using the bike cages in Fremantle and Bullcreek. The rumour is that these cages have a different control system that removes all the restrictions from the system used in other locations, but at the same time it is more secure.

I you do not want to clutter up the forum, you can write to me at the BTA ( [email protected] )

I will cross post this to a couple of other locations...apologies in advance

I can advise you of my disappointing experience with the transperth Lock & Ride cage at Maddington Station on the Armadale line.

I registered for Smartrider access some time before, and got it no problem. After locking my bike (Giant Elwood, black/silver)in there over several days, I came back on the 12/2/13, to find it was missing. Reported it to Transperth and the Police, and followed them up on it. The Police have to request access to the video footage before it can be released. Called up the transperth video office a few days later, and was told that the request had just been received, and would take a few days to be processed. That afternoon, my wife got a call from a constable at the Gosnells Police Station, saying that the camera footage was not available due to camera upgrades (or something similar), and they recommended I claim my bike on insurance.

A few days later I got a call from the video office, from a guy who wanted some details from me before he began looking for the data! He didnt know anything about what the Gosnells constable had said. Later on he called me back to tell me that, no the camera footage was not availabe, but the reason was, that there is one camera at that end of the platform, and it can point at either the carpark on one side of the tracks, or the bike cage on the other, but not both, and it had been pointing at the carpark, due to some previous disturbances (by previous I assumed they meant days/weeks, not hours. they do not monitor these cameras on any regular basis). They intended to re-task it to point at the bike cage as they had reports of a number of bike thefts from there, recently. Thanks for the heads up, guys. I believed my bike was secure in there, but obviously the crims are piggybacking legitimate users into the cage to get access. (Or, the crim is a legitmate user). Since then, I have seen bikes in there have every accessory including the seat stripped from them, when presumably the crims couldn't break the lock. You have to wonder if the Police were simply trying to clear all the low value jobs off their list by fobbing it off to insurance companies.

Next disappointment: my insurance company rejected the claim. When we signed up with HBF Home, Contents & unspecified valuables, bikes were covered Australia wide. Since they got bought out by CGU, they slipped some changes into the fine print when the policy was up for renewal, and now bikes are only covered if at home, as in contents, not as valuables. Right at the back of the policy document, in the glossary it says: "sporting equipment. Equipment designed to be used in a leisure activity that involves some element of physical activity or competition, excluding pedal cycles". Be wary, people. And, we signed up for that, the month before this theft. Darn.

So, I have no bike and no recourse. I think all I have left is to call up that constable and say "sorry, my insurance wouldn't cover that bike. How about looking for it now?"

As far as waiting lists for the shelters, from the link previously posted I saw that Maddington has capacity of 18, 57 registered users, and 0 on the waiting list. That last statistic would have something to do with the fact that there is at most about 3 or 4 bikes ever in it, and the reason would be the appalling theft rate, and apparent lack of surveillance.

I'm going to bite on this one - can I just clarify that you left a bike in Maddington train station for several days and expected it to be there when you got back?

I realise it is meant to be secure, but I query the logic of assuming it will remain secure over a period of days (and thats not even taking into account that its been locked up in Maddo of all places).

Users remain responsible for locking their bicycles inside the shelter as Transperth accepts no liability for theft or damage to property while in the facility.

That's why I have a bunky old single speed to leave a the train station.

Regarding HBF, I got screwed by them in a similar fashion. We took out an "Unspecified Valuables Cover" up to 5x items of $1000 value each for a claim. Things like mobile phones, cheap laptop, expensive prescription sunglasses, handbag, sports equipment etc. covered Australia wide. Things that aren't covered under contents insurance since you generally use them away from home.

When HBF got taken over by CGU they totally changed what this policy covered, it was basically converted to an additional contents cover. Why they thought we would want an extra policy for $5,000 value on top of our $80,000 home contents policy that provided no extra cover, I am not sure (obviously because it was a computer, so no actual thought was put into it). They also changed which items were included, many of the things that the policy was specifically sold to us for. And suddenly there are 3 levels of contents cover and we had been converted to the mid level, so things that we used to be covered for, we are no longer.

Of course I only found all this out when I went to make a claim. They have basically weaselled there way out by making edits to the policy, but who really goes through and reads the entire policy each year? Even the HBF girl on the phone admitted that she didn't. Yes, the renewal clearly stated that CGU was the new underwriter, but it didn't suggest that the policy changes were so massive. Anyway I'm still disputing the whole mess with them and will most likely be taking my 6-7 policies somewhere else.

Regarding the security cameras. After an incident with a broken car window at Cockburn Park & Ride I was told that although the cameras can pan and zoom, they are not actively monitored for suspicious behaviour and they stay in their default position. I believe the cameras can be controlled from a console at the station and from a centralised monitoring location, but unless security/police/etc. call something in and alert the operator while an incident is happening, the cameras stay put.

In other words, they're useless because the government will not pay for someone to watch them and use them to their full capacity.

argybargy wrote:I'm going to bite on this one - can I just clarify that you left a bike in Maddington train station for several days and expected it to be there when you got back?

I realise it is meant to be secure, but I query the logic of assuming it will remain secure over a period of days (and thats not even taking into account that its been locked up in Maddo of all places).

I think he means he left it there daily over several consecutive days.

cray- wrote:In other words, they're useless because the government will not pay for someone to watch them and use them to their full capacity.

They are useless because they won't purchase decent cameras and decent analytics software - these days the camera systems can ID "probable known problem makers"; track them and SMS/email the operator to intervene

(and yes, I do this sort of thing for a living. It's not rocket science)

The way I see it is if a bike gets stolen its because it was not locked properly. If you dont want your bike stolen, get a real D lock and a cable, or 2 D locks. I lock my bike at Currambine Station and everyday I look at the locks on other peoples bikes. They are a joke! Dinky little toy cable locks etc. You can cut through one in a matter of seconds. If your bike is worth anything to you lock it up properly/invest in a real lock (kryptonite).

Your right of course but it's just not something people give any thought to.

Yesterday I saw a bike with a solid heay cable lock which wouldn't have been cheap and it wass only going through the rear whell, it wasn't even threaded through the rear triangle! So pop the quick release, flick the chain off the sprockets and presto you've got yourself a bike. Crazy!

Located on Tenders WABike Shelter Upgrade Civil, Electrical, Communications and Associated WorksAs part of its services to customers, the Public Transport Authority provides secure bicycle facilities across the network. Customers are able to ride their push bikes to rail stations and leave the bike in secure bike shelters or lockers, before boarding trains.

One of the primary aims of PTA is to increase patronage on the rail network. By providing a secure and reliable accessible bike shelter at rail stations, customers will be encouraged to ride their bikes to the station and lock them up having faith that the bike will be in the shelter upon their return. The end result is increased patronage on the rail network as well as health benefits to PTA customers.

This contract is for the provision of civil earth works at Bike Shelters consisting of site preparation, electrical and communications cable installation, shelter modification and associated footings and other ancillary works at some 51 sites across the rail network.

monkeymagik wrote:The way I see it is if a bike gets stolen its because it was not locked properly. If you dont want your bike stolen, get a real D lock and a cable, or 2 D locks. I lock my bike at Currambine Station and everyday I look at the locks on other peoples bikes. They are a joke! Dinky little toy cable locks etc. You can cut through one in a matter of seconds. If your bike is worth anything to you lock it up properly/invest in a real lock (kryptonite).

I think bike theft tec is a bit more advanced than you think cordless angle grinders, small hydrulic jacks for d locks, lots examples on u tubethe only time i would leave an expensive bike with a kryptonite lock on it at Maddington station is if i had a foolproof insurance policy and wanted a bike upgrade.

when they get the cameras working and start jailing offenders, they will shift back to smashing the windows on commuters cars parked near the station in case there are valuables in the glove box..

Let them try parked cars then. that'll get more attention on security upgrades.

I went through Cockburn station on Thursday night just as security was locking up the building, spotted a pair of quick-release skewers sitting on a bus shelter seat and traced it back to a bike parked at the U-rails. Looks like some bored muppet just decided to vandalise a bike so that someone couldn't ride home. Even though the bike was locked to the rail they tried pulling bits away. Bottom line, I'd never use the U-rails and we need more bike cages and boxes so yay for upgrades.

(And if you're the owner of a Reid Condor flatbar maybe invest in some pitlock skewers).

To meet the growing demand for bike parking facilities at our train stations, bike shelters will be extended and security at existing shelters improved....

In 2011 a new electronic Lock ‘n’ Ride secure bike parking system was installed across the network which required users to register their SmartRider to access the shelter. The system capped the number of people which could register for each shelter.

Due to this system’s popularity the number of registrations became fully subscribed for the more than 970 bike parking spots across the network.

In order to ensure as many people can park at the shelters as possible, a new system that allows more people to register for each shelter was successfully trialled at Bullcreek and Fremantle stations. This new registration system, which operates on a first in basis, will be rolled out across the network.

The shelters at the following stations will be unsecure for up to two weeks as they are progressively being upgraded with the new security system:

In theory the upgrade would open the door to remove restrictions on the number of people who can register at any one bike shelter (99) and would also enable users to register at multiple shelters. However I do not know if both these improvements will be implemented..